


Outliers (Find Me In The Morning Sunlight)

by Copper_Nails (Her_Madjesty)



Series: Finding Myself (And Maybe You) [3]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Cassian Worries In The Distance, F/M, Gen, Jyn Experiences Alliance Amenities After Doing Hard Time, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Sharing a Bed, Touch Starved Jyn, Unresolved Emotional Tension, sassy robots
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-27
Updated: 2016-12-27
Packaged: 2018-09-12 14:18:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,309
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9075988
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Her_Madjesty/pseuds/Copper_Nails
Summary: “I am not programmed to believe in miracles,” K-2SO informs her as they take the final steps towards the door, “but the fact that you did not kill the captain in his sleep registers as close to an impossibility as is processable. I do not anticipate such an outlier occurring again.”The effort it takes Jyn not to roll her eyes is almost unbearable. “We’ll see, K-2,” she says, stepping out into the light of day. “We’ll see.”





	

**Author's Note:**

> I keep coming back to this series for multiple reasons, not least of which includes all of the lovely comments you all leave for me! If the small moments I find for these goofs appeal to you, then I'm all the more pleased. This piece immediately follows "Home is a Bitter Word" and "Bitter Kisses" in the timeline of this series. This is also rated M for reasons of safety.
> 
> Enjoy! XOXO

Jyn tenses the moment she wakes.

It’s not the most pleasant feeling – all the muscles in her back and shoulders had gone blessedly loose with sleep, but now she’s awake and blinking, practically growling, trying to pin down the disturbance that jolted her out of bliss.

Someone snuffles beside her, then lets out a snort. The bed beneath Jyn shifts as the noise gives way to the gentle rumble of a stranger’s snores.

Jyn closes her eyes and frowns. She moves as slowly as she can, reopening her eyes in order to glance back down at the mattress. She takes in the dark scruff some scant centimeters from her face and follows it upward.

The crow’s feet and stress lines of Cassian Andor’s face soften when he sleeps. Jyn stares at him, tracing his features with her eyes while listening to him continue to snore. She debates hitting him, or at least encouraging him to roll over, but the moment she goes to shift, his arm tightens around her waist.

Jyn freezes.

She listens as his breaths grow shallow for one moment, then another. When they even back out, she slumps with relief.

The warmth of him is almost overwhelming; her skin stings, years of isolation broken down into this moment, into his hands resting on her waist and her nose nearly pressed up against his neck. Jyn tries to remember the last time she was close to someone, the last time she woke up with someone. Her cellmates were never big on cuddling. Her quick fucks were, well, quick, and while their skin was hot and smooth on hers, they never stayed long. _She_ never stayed long.

Cassian snorts again, and Jyn finds herself staring at the way his lips fall open.

The urge to laugh nearly overwhelms her, as does the urge to swear, but she contains them both. She keeps her hands gentle as they move down to touch his. She moves them away from her hips and onto the bed, where the sheet has tangled between them.

Slipping out of the bed and into the cold morning air feels like a loss, but Jyn refuses to dwell on it. The sheets fall back around Cassian in waves; she doesn’t watch them, but she waits until they’ve settled before standing, moving away.

The snoring stops for a few seconds. Jyn stills, then glances behind her in time to see Cassian shift. He pulls his arms close to his chest in a movement she recognizes, and his mouth twitches down in a frown. His eyes don’t open, though, and she finds that she breathes a little easier for it.

She turns back and slips out of the shirt she’s stolen, letting it drop to the floor. Her clothes remain where she left them the night before; she doesn’t have a second pair, so she steps back into her pants without a second thought. The cold bites at her uncovered skin, pebbles her nipples and leaves her scowling, hurrying to get the rest of her attire on.

The snoring doesn’t resume.

Jyn pulls the ratty piece of fabric she once called a bra back on and hooks it behind her back; her shirt slides on with ease. Her boots come last. She slips them on without undoing the laces, then sends a final glance back towards Cassian and the bed.

She wonders if he’ll wake with a hangover. She wonders if he’ll wonder where she’s gone.

Jyn looks away. Despite her boots, she moves softly towards the door. It slides open with a touch of her hand; she nearly leaps backwards, but manages to fight down the impulse.

The light of the barracks halls hurts less, now. The hiss of Cassian’s door shutting stings in a way Jyn can’t explain, so she chooses to ignore it.

There are a few officers awake at this hour, mulling through the halls with sleep-tousled hair. Jyn keeps her gaze down as she walks, but she trails behind them, letting them lead her to the barrack’s main entry and out into the morning sunlight.

Yavin IV, after the dust and sweat and _stink_ of the Imperial prison, wets her mouth and unravels every tense muscle in her body, if only for a second. Jyn breathes in air that doesn’t make her choke and feels her heart ride lighter in her chest.

Her inadvertent guides wander off, leaving her to pace the boundary of the barracks by herself. The grass of the planet grows wild in the building’s corners, tall and unkempt. Jyn kicks at the clumps as she walks by, leaving her mind to run on autopilot while she does.

It takes her four minutes to find a suspicious indentation in the ground, flanked by what looks like a well-worn path onto the barracks’ roof.

Jyn raises an eyebrow and studies it. Then, carefully planting her feet, she ascends.

Her eyes find the vents of the barracks before anything else; there are seven interspersed along the expanse. They don’t appear large enough to let more than one person slip through them at a time, but then again, Jyn assumes this is not their purpose. She pokes at the one nearest to her, listening for the sounds of a fan whirling within.

She finds the blaster by accident.

A few feet away from her vent of choice, Jyn freezes. The blaster looks…familiar, but in the same way most bastardized Imperial blasters do (Jyn’s experience with them is divided between wielding blasters she’s stolen over the years and moments sitting on the wrong end of them). She hesitates before picking it up, checking its settings and the safety it bears.

When it doesn’t go off in her hands, she clips it onto her belt.

She stays on the roof for a little while longer, watching as the sun starts to burst through the tree line of the forest that surrounds the base. The number of rebels trickling out of their bunks grows in number, though not by much; they all migrate towards a circular building located roughly in the center of the base. Jyn watches, head tilting, as they disappear inside.

When she descends from the roof, she tucks in behind a pair of pilots and follows. They push through the building’s glass doors without issue; Jyn slips in behind them and is struck by the scent of warm food.

She and her guides walk through another set of doors and into the Rebellion’s mess.

Jyn’s joints lock up the moment she steps inside; the mess door slams shut behind her. It’s one of the largest rooms she’s ever been in, including the messes of the prisons where she’s been held. There seem to be hundreds of tables interspersed throughout the room; there is, equally, at least one rebel at each of them.

Jyn blinks, then flinches as the glass door behind her swings open. The officer who passes by shoots her an odd look, then returns her attention to the line of people disappearing into the mess’s kitchen.

Jyn fights back an embarrassed flush and falls into line behind her.

The tray that gets handed to her by a disgruntled staff member is still wet from a rewashing, but Jyn doesn’t mind. She loads it with nuna eggs and thick slices of Gamorrean pork, all the while trying to keep the drool from escaping her mouth.

(In the back of her mouth, buried in her molars but not quite hitting her throat, there is the taste of the last real meal Jyn ever ate. Blue milk, thick and cleansing; bread with real butter, warm on days filled with grey skies; strips of tailring bacon that left fat in the pan that her father – her father – would use to season dinner or to light their candles at night.)

She sits down, heavy, at a table with one other person at it – a duros, too engrossed in the padd in his hands to notice her arrival. Jyn’s hands are shaking as she goes to poke at her food. She watches it with a wary eye and hesitates, even as her stomach lets out a long, low growl.

The duros looks at her. There are two gold bars on the sleeve of the shirt that he wears and a confusion, then a spark, in his eyes as he observes her.

“There are utensils up by the milk,” he say in a voice guttural enough to shake the table. Heads turn, a few feet away, their attention brought on by the noise.

Jyn does not flush. She does not rise. She looks the duros dead in the face, lifts her pork with both hands, and eats.

She misses the amusement on the captain’s features when she moans. A few more heads in the mess turn to look at her. Jyn ignores them, too.

If the rebel base is rationing its food supply, Jyn doesn’t notice. She returns to the food line once, twice, and then for a third time, though her fourth serving of food consists of a tough biscuit and a cup of caf. Her duros companion only shakes his green head at her, smiling with occasional fondness in between the reading of his padd. Jyn makes no effort to engage him in conversation; she eats until the emptiness in her stomach subsides.

Her hands, when she’s finished, are covered in grease; with a sidelong glance, Jyn wipes them on her trousers. Her jaw aches from chewing, but she welcomes the pain.

She’s cradling her refilled cup of caf when Cassian Andor comes stumbling into the mess. His hair is still mussed from sleep, and there’s a sleepy curve to the downward twist of his mouth, but his eyes are wide and alert. Jyn sips at her caf, watching him as he steps forward, his eyes flickering through the crowd.

A disgruntled clattering from the mess’s door distracts the both of them, momentarily. Jyn tilts her head, then narrows her eyes as the Imperial droid from the day before works its way into the building. The bruise on her chest aches, for a moment, before it fades back into the pains and aches Jyn carries with her, already. Jyn lets her gaze drift away from the droid with a wince and refocuses on her caf.

She’s not sure when she realizes that Captain Andor has spotted her. A heat slinks up the back of her neck, slow; the urge to bristle is irresistible, and Jyn feels herself go tense all over. She doesn’t turn, however. She fixes her gaze on a spot across the mess and waits for the heat to dissipate.

Across the table, the durso looks at her again. He glances over her shoulder, red eyes blinking. Jyn scowls as one of his thin eyebrows shoots upward.

When he looks at her again, his mouth is curling into an amused, if not curious, smile. “You have quite the guard dog,” he tells her, tucking his padd away.

“Do I?” Jyn deadpans.

The durso’s smirk grows all the wider.

Her ears twitch backward at the sound of creaking metal joints and ungentle grumbling. The durso rises and leaves her with a nod. Jyn watches him disappear into the crowd, refusing to turn, even as the Imperial droid comes to rest at her side.

“Ms. Erso,” the droid says. Its accent grates on her nerves; Jyn takes another long sip of her caf and refuses to look up.

A deep rattling sound echoes through the droid’s thoracic chamber. “Captain Andor has ordered me to inform you that your meeting with Senator Mothma begins in ten minutes,” it drolls. “I am to escort you to the meeting myself.”

“Of course you are,” Jyn mutters. She looks longing back towards her empty plate, then casts a careful glance up, up, upward towards the droid’s glowing optical sensors. It tilts its head, and, though expressionless, radiates a smug air.

“There is a seventy eight percent chance that we will be late to the meeting,” the droid informs her.

Jyn swirls the last of her caf in her cup. “You’re a K-2SO droid, aren’t you?”

“Your observational skills are subpar for a thief of your record,” K-2SO informs her. “As is your memory. Did the captain not inform you of my status yesterday?”

Jyn hums and does not respond. The ticking of K-2SO’s joints keeps time as she drags out the last of her caf. The deep rattling of before repeats itself, before long.

“There is now an eighty six percent chance that we will be late to the meeting with Senator Mothma,” K-2SO says. “If you continue to dawdle, I will be forced to physically deliver you to the meeting. You will not enjoy the process.”

A harsh laugh breaks loose from Jyn’s throat. The few rebels at the tables around her wince at the sound, looking away if they can manage. Jyn sets her empty caf cup down with a distinct thud and sees a few members of her audience wince.

“I’ve sold larger droids than you as scrap to the Hutts on Tattooine,” she informs K-2SO as she rises to her feet. “If you so much as lay a hand on me, I will see you in pieces.”

With that, she starts for the mess hall door. K-2SO’s steps echo behind her, unsubtle against the mess’s tile floor.

“I am not programmed to believe in miracles,” it informs her as they take the final steps towards the door, “but the fact that you did not kill the captain in his sleep registers as close to an impossibility as is processable. I do not anticipate such an outlier occurring again.”

The effort it takes Jyn not to roll her eyes is almost unbearable. “We’ll see, K-2,” she says, stepping out into the light of day. “We’ll see.”

**Author's Note:**

> Let me know what you thought!


End file.
